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THE WRITINGS OF 
KING ALFRED 



d. 901 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON, M.A. 

HONORARY FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD 



{An Address delivered at Harvard College^ Mass, 
March^ ipoi) 



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THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

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THE WRITINGS OF 
KING ALFRED 

d. 901 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON, M.A. 

HONORARY FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD 



(^An .Address delivered at Harvard College^ Afass.^ 
March ^ igoi) 






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The Writings of King Alfred 

(Died 901) 

In the great days of antique culture, when the 
citizen of Athens, coming from the Academus or 
the Stoa, found himself in the Museum of Alexandria, 
or in the schools of Syracuse, Magna Graecia, Asia 
Minor, or Tyre, he felt that he was still in his own 
country, both intellectually and morally, whatever 
might be the state or nation to which he had trav- 
elled. He and his guests spoke but one language, 
shared the same civilisation, and had in common the 
same immortal literature. 

And now, a son of Oxford or Cambridge in the old 
island feels himself at home, amongst his own people 
and fellow-students, when he is welcomed at Harvard 
of the new continent. We all have but one language, 
the tongue now spoken by 130,000,000 of civilised 
men ; and we have the same literature, the noblest 
literature of the modern world. And so, when I was 
honoured with the invitation to address you, I be- 
thought me I would speak to you of the rise of that 
literature which is our common heritage, which more 
than race, or institutions, or manners and habits, makes 
us all one — which is far the richest, the most con- 



2 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

tinuous, the most virile evolution of human genius 
in the records of Christendom. 

I call to mind also that this year is the millenary 
or thousandth anniversary of the death, in 901, of 
Alfred the West Saxon King/ who is undoubtedly 
the founder of a regular prose literature, as of so many 
other English institutions and ways. Could there be 
a fitter theme for an English man of letters in an 
American seat of learning ? There was nothing in- 
sular about Alfred ; he was not British ; he was not 
feudal ; his memory is not stained by any crime done in 
the struggles of nation, politics, or religion. He lived 
ages before " Great Britain " was invented, mainly, I 
believe, in order to humour our Scotch brother-citizens ; 
ages before Protestantism divided Christendom ; ages 
before kingship ceased to be useful and republics began 
to be normal. Alfred was never King of England : 
he lived and died King of the West Saxons, the ances- 
tral head of a Saxon clan. He and his people were 
just as much your ancestors as they were mine, for 
all we can say is, that the 130,000,000 who speak our 
Anglo-Saxon tongue have all a fairly equal claim to 
look on him as the heroic leader of our 'remote fore- 
fathers.^ 



1 The year 901 is accepted by historians as the date of Alfred's death. Recent 
research by competent paleographers has made it more probable that he died in 899 or 
900. See articles and letters in the English Historical RenjieiVy Atbenaum, etc. 
The Millenary' Commemoration Committee decided not to enter on the debated prob- 
lem, but to adhere to the date generally recognised when the committee was formed. 

2 A large representative committee, of which the Queen is patron, was formed in 
1898 to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of Alfred's death. A grand colos- 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 3 

But I wish now to speak of Alfred not as our father 
in blood, or in nation, but as the real father of native 
prose, that common inheritance of us all, which, after 
a thousand years of fertility, has lost none of its vigour, 
its purity, and its wealth. The thousandth anniver- 
sary of his death has aroused new attention to his 
work, and has produced some important books to 
which I will direct your notice. Of Alfred the man, 
the warrior, the statesman, the hero, the saint, I will 
not now speak. In each of these characters he was 
perfect, — the purest, grandest, most heroic soul that 
ever sprang from our race. It is only of Alfred the 
writer of books, the creator of Saxon prose, that I 
wish to speak. He was indeed one of those rare 
rulers of men who trust to the book as much as to 
the sword, who value the school more than the court, 
who believe in no force but the force of thought and 
of truth. 

In that noble and pathetic preface to his Pastoral 
Care^ Alfred himself has told us how and why he 
carried through the restoration of learning in his 
church and people. When the first long struggle 
with the Danes was over, he found his kingdom 
desolate, and ignorance universal. There was not one, 
he says, on this side of Humber who could understand 
their mass-book or put a letter from Latin into Eng- 



sal statue by Mr. Hamo Thorneycroft, R. A., is now being raised at Winchester, where 
he lived and died, by British and American subscribers. The Hon. Secretary of the 
English committee is Mr. Alfred Bowker, Mayor of Winchester. The Hon. Treasurer 
is Lord Avebury, of Robarts, Lubbock & Co., Lombard Street, London. 



4 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

lish. He groaned to think how learning had flourished 
before the great invasion. He wondered how the 
good and wise men of old had omitted to translate 
their Latin books into English, so that the people 
might read them and hear them read. He supposes 
they could not believe that learning would die down so 
utterly. And so the great King set himself to work 
with all the fire of one who was both hero and genius 
to the twofold task, first, to restore learning and found a 
national education, and secondly to put the great books 
of the world into the mother-tongue of his people. 
For the first, he gathered round him scholars from all 
parts, without distinction of country or race, Welsh, 
Celts, Mercians, Flemings, Westphalians, as well as men 
of Wessex and Kent. The second task he undertook 
himself. Having mastered Latin late in manhood 
after strenuous toil, he became the first of translators, 
and in so doing he founded a prose literature. 

As a boy, Alfred had shown his zest for study. , He 
had been taken to Rome and to the Court of the 
Frank King.-^ But from the age of eighteen he was 
occupied for twenty years with desperate wars and 
the reorganisation of his kingdom. It was not until 
he had been king sixteen years, and was thirty- q 
eight years old, that he found himself free for literary 
work. That he did all this, as he tells us with stately 



1 I incline to think that when Ethelwulf sent the boy to Rome at the age of four, 
Alfred remained there for perhaps over two years till his father brought him back } and, 
though he did not learn to read, his childish mind was filled with what he there heard 
of antiquity and of the Christian world. 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 5 

pathos, "In the various and manifold worldly cares 
that oft troubled him both in mind and in body/' is 
to me one of the most mysterious tales of intellectual 
passion in the history of human thought. It places 
him in the rare rank of those warriors and rulers who, 
amidst all the battle of their lives, have left the world 
imperishable works of their own composition, such as 
did David, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Aurelius.^ 

The works of Alfred are numerous, important, and 
admirably chosen.^ His Handbook — a sort of anthol- 
ogy or golden treasury of fine thoughts which he col- 
lected whilst Asser was reading to him and teaching 
him to translate — has utterly perished, though Will- 
iam of Malmesbury, two centuries later, used and cited 
it. Ah ! how many libraries of volumes would we will- 
ingly lose to-day if time would give up to us from its 
Lethean maw that well-thumbed book, " about the size 
of a Psalter^" that the holy king was wont to keep in 
his bosom : the book wherein from day to day he noted 
down in English some great thought that had im- 
pressed him in his studies. 



1 See Pauli. Life of Alfred the Great, 1851, translated by B. Thorpe, Bohn*s 
Ecclesiastical Library, 1857, with text and translation of the Orosius ; also the Jubilee 
Edition of Afred's Works, 185 2- 1853. The latest account of Alfred's career as 
king, warrior, lawgiver, scholar, and author is to be found in the volume published by 
the Alfred Commemoration Committee. Alfred the Great (Adam and Charles Black), 
London, 1899. 8vo. 

2 For the writings of King Alfred, consult the work just referred to and the essays 
therein of the Bishop of Bristol, and Rev. Professor Earle ; also see Mr. Stopford 
Brooke's English Literature to the Norman Conquest. Macmillan & Co., 1898. 8vo. 
Chapter xiv, and R. P. Wiilker's Grundriss sur Gescbichte der Angelsacbsischen Lit- 
ter atur. 



6 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

After his personal Handbook of thoughts came Al- 
fred's Laws^ which we possess intact in several ver- 
sions. This book for literary purposes is interesting 
only by its preface, evidently dictated by the King him- 
self Here we have in a sentence that spirit of order, 
of simplicity, of modesty, of self-control, of respect for 
public opinion, of reverence for the past time, and of 
solemn consideration of the times to come, which 
stamps the whole career of Alfred as ruler. 

" I, Alfred the King, gathered these laws together and 
ordered many to be written which our forefathers held, such 
as I approved ; and many which I approved not I rejected, 
and had other ordinances enacted with the counsel of my 
Witan ; for I dared not venture to set much of my own upon 
the Statute-book, for I knew not what might be approved by 
those who should come after us. But such ordinances as I 
found, either in the time of my kinsman Ina, or of Offa, King 
of the Mercians, or of Ethelberht, who first received baptism 
in England — such as seemed to me rightest I have collected 
here, and the rest I have let drop. I, then, Alfred, King of the 
West Saxons, showed these laws to all my Witan, and they 
then said that they all approved of them as proper to be holden." 

There spoke the soul of the true conservative, moder- 
ate, and far-seeing chief of a free people, a creator of 
states, such as were Solon and Trajan in antiquity : 
such as were, in later days, some adored chief of a free 
people, a WiUiam the Silent, or a George Washington. 
The books of which Alfred is certainly and strictly 

1 Dr. Felix Liebermann's Geset-ze der Angehdcbsen, 1898, etc. 4to. The latent 
critical edition of the Saxon laws j also see the essay, in the joint volume, by Professor 
Sir Frederick Pollock. 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 7 

the author are five in number ; all translations or adap- 
tations from the Latin, and all typical works of standard 
authority. They were evidently selected with a broad 
and discerning judgment. Alfred's mind was essen- 
tially historic and cosmopolitan. So he began with 
the standard text-book of general history, the work 
of St. Augustine's disciple and colleague/ Orosius, of 
the fifth century. Alfred again was preeminently the 
patriot — thiQ parens patri^. And accordingly he chose 
the History of the Church in England^ or rather the 
Christian history of the Anglo-Saxon federation, by 
the Venerable Bede, to give his people the annals of 
their own ancestors. Alfred again felt a prime need 
of restoring the church in knowledge and in zeal. 
And so he translated the famous Fastoral Care of 
Gregory the Great — the accepted manual for training 
to the priestly office. A second work of Pope Greg- 
ory which he translated was the Dialogues^ a collection 
of popular tales. Lastly, came the translation, para- 
phrase, or recasting of Boethius's Consolation of Phi- 
losophy — far the most original and important of all 
Alfred's writings. He thus provided (i) a history of 
the world, (2) a history of his own country, (3) a text- 
book of education of the priesthood, (4) a people's 
story book, (5) moral and religious meditations. I 
will speak of each of these, but principally of the last, 
the Boethius^ which, by its originality and its beauty, 
gives us far the truest insight into the inner faith and 
the literary genius of the King. 

There were some other works in which his impulse 



8 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

is seen, but where his actual hand is not certainly to 
be proved. First and foremost comes the Saxon 
Chronicle^ the most authentic and important record of 
its youth which any modern nation possesses. Dur- 
ing the active life of Alfred this yearly record of events 
is undoubtedly of contemporaneous authorship ; and 
for the most important years of Alfred's reign it is very 
full and keenly interesting. The evidence is conclusive 
that the King gave the most powerful stimulus to the 
compilation of the record, and thus was the founder 
of a systematic history of our country ;, for we may 
truly say that no error of the least importance has ever 
been proven against the Chronicle^ which is properly 
regarded as the touchstone of historic veracity to which 
all other annals are submitted. It is to my judgment 
clear that the history of the wars with the Danes as 
told in the Chronicle was prepared under the personal 
direction of the chief himself, if it was not actually 
dictated by his lips. 

The King is said to have begun a translation of the 
Psalms of David, which was cut short by his death ; 
but of these we have no known copy. The Soliloquies 
of St. Augustine^ is of his age, and has been imputed 
to his authorship. I incline to the belief that the 
preface is his own work, and that he superintended, if 
he did not execute, the translation. The same may 



1 Saxon Chronicle. Text of all manuscripts and translation by B. Thorpe. Rolls 
Series, 1861. 

2 Soliloquies of St. Augustine, Text in The Shrine^ by Rev. T. Oswald Cockayne, 
1 8 64-1 8 70. 8vo. 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 9 

be the truth of the Book of Martyrs} Lastly, there 
is the King's Testament^ ^hiohy though highly interest- 
ing, is hardly a literary composition. No one accepts 
the authenticity of the Proverbs of Alfred^ composed 
some centuries later, nor do we attribute to him the 
translation of the Fables of jEsopy nor the treatise on 
Falconry. But these and some other works that 
are ascribed to him testify to the belief of ages long 
after his death that his literary activity was of wide 
range and of permanent value. 

After studying the arguments of the Anglo-Saxon 
scholars about the order of time in the composition 
of these works, I incline to the view of Mr. Stopford 
Brooke in his History of English Literature to the 
Norman Conquest , i8g8. He makes the order this, — 
the Pastoral Care^ the Bede^ the Or^j/^j, and lastly the 
Boethius. This, at least, is the order I shall adopt ; 
and it certainly lends itself best to the literary estimate. 
Most authorities put the Boethius earlier. But we 
must not rely too exclusively on paleography and dia- 
lectic variations in this matter. Paleographists and 
the dialect experts wage incessantly their own civil 
wars, and I am not always ready to swear fealty to 
the victor or the survivor of the hour.^ A consen- 
sus of paleographists and experts in dialect is conclu- 
sive, or conclusive as far as it goes. But until we know 
all the circumstances under which a given manuscript 
was written, I am not prepared to surrender my own 

1 Book of Martyrs. Text in The Shrine. 

2 Wiilker (op. cit.) gives a table. of these differences amongst the editors. 



lO THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

common sense. There is a historical and a literary 
flair in these things, which ought not to be hghtly 
distrusted, unless contradicted by indisputable written 
proof. We have no reason to suppose that Alfred 
wrote much, or even at all, with his own hand. Most 
great men of action dictate, and do not hold the pen. 
And the fact that a given manuscript has traces of a 
Mercian or a Northumbrian dialect is no sufficient 
proof that it could not be Alfred's work, unless we 
can prove that no Mercian, no Northumbrian, ever 
copied a book which Alfred had dictated, composed, 
or directed to be written. 

The naif and pathetic preface to the Pastoral Care^ 
of Pope Gregory the Great is unquestionably the 
King's own work, and is a touching revelation of his 
intense love for his native land and his passion to 
give his people a higher education. I cannot read 
that simple outpouring of soul by the great reformer 
without seeing the confession that it was a most urgent 
task, and his own first attempt at translating ; and thus 
I judge it to come next after his Handbook and his 
Laws. It was natural that a great and systematic 
restorer of learning should begin with the' training of 
those who were to teach. And thus Alfred's first 
great literary work was the translation of the standard 
manual for the education of the clergy and of other 
scholars. He would often meditate, he says, what 
wise men, what happy times there were of old in 

1 Cura Pastoralis. Text and translation, edited by H. Sweet. Early English Text 
Society, 1871. 8vo. For the preface, see Stopford Brooke, op. cit., p. 24. 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED II 

England, how kings preserved peace, morality, and 
order at home, and enlarged their borders without, 
how foreigners came to the land in search of wisdom 
and instruction. Now, he groans out, all is changed, 
and in these days of war and distress hardly a man 
could read a Latin book. And yet, he adds, what 
punishments would come upon us if we neither loved 
wisdom nor suffered other men to obtain it: we should 
love the name only of Christian, and very few of the 
virtues. Then he goes on to speak of the ravages 
and burnings of the Danes, how the few books left 
were in Latin, and how few Englishmen could read 
that tongue. '" Therefore," he says, "it seems better 
to -me to translate some books, which are most needful 
for all men to know, into the language which we can 
all understand. And this I would have you do, if 
we can preserve peace, to set all the youth now in Eng- 
land of free men, whose circumstances enable them 
to devote themselves to it, to learn as long as they 
are not old enough for other occupations, until they 
are well able to read English writing." Here was a 
scheme of primary education for the people, education 
which was not made effective in our country until my 
own lifetime. And then he goes on to the higher 
education, ordaining that " those be afterwards taught 
more in the Latin language who are to continue learn- 
ing and be promoted to a higher rank." Next, he 
tells us how he began "among other various and 
manifold troubles of this kingdom to translate into 
English the book which is called in Latin PastoraliSy 



12 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

and in English Shepherd's Booky sometimes word for 
word, and sometimes according to the sense, as I had 
learnt it from Plegmund, my Archbishop, and Asser, 
my bishop, and Grimbold, my mass-priest, and John, 
my mass-priest. And when I had learnt it, as I could 
best understand it, and as I could most clearly interpret i 
it, I translated it into English; and I will send a copy ' 
to every bishopric in my kingdom." 

Here, then, is a great ruler, more than a thousand \ 
years ago, when the area and population of his own I 
country were far below those of this state, when their ) 
very existence was at stake, and they were surrounded 
by ferocious invaders, who designs a scheme for pri- \ 
mary and superior education, and restores the church t 
and the schools. Here is the man who began, and \ 
certainly had he been longer lived and enjoyed peace, [ 
might have carried through, the translation of the Bible, ^ 
seven centuries before it was actually accomplished. 
There is a most fascinating relic connected with this 
very work. The Bodleian Library at Oxford pos- 
sesses the very copy which the King sent to Worces- 
ter. It is inscribed ©eos Bog Sceal To Wiogara 
Ceastre, i,e. This book shall {go) to Worcester} I 
saw it when I was last in Oxford. And when I took r 
in my own hands the very copy of his toil which Al- 
fred a thousand years ago sent with his greeting to his 
Bishop at Worcester, which he solemnly commanded 
in the name of God no man should remove from the 
Minster ; when I held in my hand in the Ashmolean 

1 Bodleian Library. Manuscripts. Hatton, 20. 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED IJ 

Museum ^ the very jewel which the King had made 
for himself (perhaps to bear upon his sceptre) inscribed, 
— Mlfred had me worked^ — I felt something of that 
thrill which men of old felt when they kissed a frag- 
ment of the true cross, or which the Romans felt when 
they saluted the Sibylline books. If to-day we fall short 
in the power of mystical imagination, our saner relic- 
worship is founded upon history, scholarship, and jeal- 
ous searching into the minutest footprints of the past. 

Of the Dialogues of Gregory, we need say little, for 
the translation as yet exists only in three manuscripts. 
But I follow the view of Professor Earle, that the book 
is the King's work, as the characteristic preface most 
obviously is.^ " I, Alfred," it runs, " by the grace of 
God, dignified with the honour of royalty, have under- 
stood and have often heard from reading holy books 
that we to whom God hath given so much eminence 
of worldly distinction, have peculiar need at times to 
humble and subdue our minds to the divine and spir- 
itual law, in the midst of this earthly anxiety : " . . . 
" that I may now and then contemplate the heavenly 
things in the midst of these earthly troubles." 

In the Pastoral Care the King carefully followed the 
:ext of the Latin, neither adding nor omitting any- 
Vhing in a revered book of such authority by the spir- 
itual founder of Saxon Christianity. And in a first 
essay he proceeded with scrupulous attention to his 

1 Now deposited in the Taylor Museum, Oxford, and described "in a new work by 
Professor Earle — Tht Alfred Jeivel, an Historical Essay, 1 90 1. Clarendon Press. 
Cr. 8vo. 2 Professor Earle' s essay in joint volume, p. 198. 



14 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

original. As he advanced in scholarship and literary 
skill, he became much more free, until in the Boethius 
he uses the Latin almost as a text for his own medita- 
tions. In the translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical His- 
tory^ Alfred omits many sections, of which he gives a 
list ; but he adds nothing, although there were many 
points as to the history of Wessex wherein he might 
have corrected and supplemented Bede's meagre state- 
ments. The translation keeps fairly well to the origi- 
nal, but it has no special literary value. The next 
translation of the King was the History of the WorU 
by Orosius,^ which St. Augustine suggested as a com- 
panion to his own argument, in the City of God^ thai: 
the wars and desolation of the Roman world were no^: 
caused by the spread of the Gospel. It was the only 
book known in the Middle Ages as a universal his- 
tory, and it was as such that Alfred put it forth. But, 
as his object was essentially to educate, he adds full 
explanations of matters which Saxons would not easily^ 
follow, and his very elaborate additions on geography > 
the topography of the German peoples, the account of 
the Baltic and Scandinavia by the Norseman, Ohthere, 
have a freshness, a distinctness, and precision which pe- 
culiarly stamp the organising and eager grasp of a born 
explorer, who believed with the Prophet — " many shall 
run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." 



1 Baeda's Ecclesiastical History, Text and modern English, by T. Miller (E. E. 
Text Society), 1890-1898. 

2 Orosius. Text and Latin by H. Sweet (E. E. Text Society), and also by Thorpe, . \. 
in Pauli's Life, translated. See Note i, p. 5. j 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 1 5 

We come now to Alfred's BoethiuSy far the most 
important work of his pen. It is almost an original 
treatise, so great are the variations, additions to, and 
omissions from the Latin text. Whole chapters are 
dropped by the translator, and page after page of new 
thoughts are inserted. Some idea of the extent of this 
paraphrasing may be got, when we find the first twelve 
pages of the Latin compressed into two of Alfred's, 
and nearly the whole of the last book of the Latin, 
occupying fifteen octavo pages, dropped altogether, 
and new matter of the King's, filling nine pages, in- 
serted. Alfred took the Meditations of Boethius as 
a standard text-book of moral and religious thought, 
and he uses it as the basis of his own musings upon 
man, the world, and God. Alfred intends his book 
to be for the edification of his own people. And, ac- 
cordingly, he drops most of the classical philosophy ; 
expands and explains the mythological and poetic allu- 
sions ; and changes the Platonic theism of Boethius 
into BibHcal and Christian divinity. The transforma- 
tion is astonishing. As we read the Latin we find it 
difficult to understand why a book so abstract, and in 
places so metaphysical and technical, held the world 
of European culture for a thousand years down to the 
age of Shakespeare. But, when we turn to Alfred's 
piece, we are in the world of those poignant searchings 
of heart which pervade the Psalms of David, the Imi- 
tation of Christy and the devotional books of Jeremy 
Taylor. 

The millenary commemoration of the King has 



1 6 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

drawn fresh attention both to Boethius and to Alfred's 
translation, and we may say that it is only in recent 
years that we have had adequate studies of both. Dr. 
Hodgkin's Italy and her Invaders and Mr. Stev/art's 
excellent volume on Boethius^ have collected in con- 
venient form almost everything that is known about 
the Roman philosopher. And quite lately Mr. Sedge- 
field, of Melbourne and Cambridge universities, has 
published two books on Alfred's version : the first, 
a critical edition of the Anglo-Saxon text from the 
manuscript with a Glossary, the second a version in 
modern English prose, and an alliterative version of the 
metres.^ Both the text and tlie modern rendering by 
Mr. Sedgefield are an immense improvement both in 
accuracy, scholarship, and elegance on the earlier edi- 
tions whether of the old or the new versions. And it 
is only now, by Mr. Sedgefield's aid, and with the 
essays by the Bishop of Bristol and Professor Earle 
in the recent volume Alfred the Great^ 1899, edited 
by the Hon. Secretary of the Millenary Commemora- 
tion Committee, and with Mr. Stopford Brooke's 
excellent chapter in his book already cited, that the 
real power of Alfred's work can be fully understood. 
This is not the occasion to enlarge on the story of 

1 Italy and her In'vaders, by Dr. T. Hodgkin, second edition, 1896. Vol. Ill, 
chap. xii. Oxford University Press. Boethius. An essay by Hugh Fraser Stewart, 
1891. 8vo. 

2 King Alfred^ s Old English Version of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophise, by] 
Walter J. Sedgefield, Oxford University Press, 1899, and King Alfred's Version of tbe\ 
Consolations of Boethius, done into Modern English, by the same. Oxford University! 
Press, 1900. I 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 



17 



Boethius himself, or the strange fortune of his famous 
book. Dr. Hodgkin has given good reason to think 
that his poHtical career was not one of such perfect 
loyalty and wisdom. And, if Alfred's introduction and 
zealous defence of him contains, as is probable, the 
church tradition about his life and death, Theodoric 
might fairly regard him as an enemy and a traitor. 
The King tells us that Boethius cast about within 
himself how he might wrest the sovereignty from the 
unrighteous King of the Goths, and that he sent word 
privily to the Caesar at Constantinople to help the 
Romans back to their Christian faith and their old laws. 
If Theodoric had grounds to beheve that Boethius 
N3.S really taking part in a conspiracy to urge the 
Eastern emperor to do what, in the next generation, 
[ustinian did when he destroyed the Gothic kingdom 
n Italy, he would naturally treat the great Roman 
:hief of the senate as a conspirator. It is not so im- 
)robable that the story, which Alfred may have heard 
Lt Rome itself not more than three hundred years 
ifter the fall of the Gothic kingdom, and which he 
reats as ample justification of Boethius, was the true 
tory, or, if greatly exaggerated, still having a substantial 
>asis in fact. If so, Theodoric did not suddenly be- 
ome a ferocious tyrant ; and St. Severinus, as Boe- 
hius was called in the church, lost his life and liberty 
n an abortive and ve.ry dangerous clerical conspiracy 
destroy the Goths and restore Italy to the Greek 
mpire. 

i But the special point to which I wish to call your 



1 8 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

attention is the literary beauty of Alfred's own work. 
I estimate that about one-quarter of the whole book 
is original matter and not translation. There are 
seldom two consecutive pages in which new matter does 
not occur ; and there are nine consecutive pages, in 
Mr. Sedgefield's editions both of the Saxon and the 
modern English, which are Alfred's original, so that 
we are well able to judge both matter and form of the 
King's work. Indeed, the Consolations of Alfred differ 
from that of Boethius as much as the Confessions of St 
Augustine differ from the ethical Treatises of Seneca, 
The Consolation of Philosophy seems to have had a 
curious attraction for translators in many languages, 
Mr. Stewart (in his sixth chapter) has given an inter- 
esting account of a great many of these, both English 
and foreign. The list of them fills many pages in 
the British Museum Catalogue. Mr. Sedgefield gives 
a long account of English translations in prose and 
verse, beginning with Chaucer, just five hundred years 
after Alfred, and continuing down to that of H. Rj 
James in 1897. In all, Mr. Sedgefield gives specif 
mens of no less than fourteen versions, from Chauce^ 
to the present day, of which five are in prose. Th^ 
most interesting of these versions are the two in prose j 
one by Chaucer at the end of the fourteenth century, on| 
by our Queen Elizabeth at the end of the sixteenth cen| 
tury. We have thus ample opportunity for comparing 
the work of Alfred with that of other translators \h 
the course of no less than five centuries. And '| 
cannot withhold my own deliberate conviction that, ^ 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED I9 

prose literature, the version of Alfred, in its simplicity, 
dignity, and power, is a finer type than any of the 
successors. 

This is truly wonderful when we remember that the 
first translation is that of our great poet, Geoffrey 
Chaucer. But poets do not always write fine prose ; 
and in the fourteenth century English prose was in 
a conglomerate and formless state. I will illustrate 
this by one or two instances, setting Alfred's prose 
beside that of Chaucer. Of course, to make myself 
intelligible, I shall transliterate Alfred's Anglo-Saxon 
into current English, using Mr. Sedgefield's admirable 
version. But this version is not really a translation. 
It follows the words of Alfred punctiliously, often 
changing nothing or little in the order, and removing 
little but the terminals and archaic forms of the words. 
This is transliteration, but not translation. I need not 
go into the question whether Alfred's Anglo-Saxon is 
English, He calls it English, and in spite of differ- 
ences of construction, syntax, grammar, and vocables, 
it is the basis of English : perhaps two-thirds of it 
closely akin to some English dialects as spoken within 
a few centuries ago. The fact that the ordinary Eng- 
lish reader cannot read a line of it, is not conclusive. 
He cannot read a line of Layamon's Brut or the Ancren 
Riwky both about a century and a half after the Con- 
quest ; nor indeed could he read a paragraph written 
phonetically in pure Scottish or Yorkshire dialect. 



I 1 specimens of Early English^ by Morris & Skeat. Oxford University Press. 



20 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

I shall not enter on the question whether Alfred is 
the founder of English prose. Alfred certainly wrote 
or dictated a fine, organic, rhythmical prose in the 
mother-tongue used by himself and his people in the 
southwest and centre of England. Three-fourths of 
the words in that tongue survive in some altered form 
in English speech and its dialectic varieties. Whether 
it be the same language as English, depends on what 
we mean by that phrase. Grammar, syntax, pronunci- 
ation, have changed. The words mostly remain under 
modern disguises. I am not satisfied by the trenchant 
decision of Professor Marsh {Origin and History of the 
English Language). I prefer the views of Skeat, Morris, 
Earle, Green, and Stopford Brooke. I do not say as 
they do, that Alfred founded English prose. But in 
any case, he founded a prose in the language which is 
the basis of English. 

I now give parallel passages from Alfred and from 
Chaucer. I take first Alfred's rendering of the fifth 
metre of Boethius's first book : the grand hymn — O 
stelliferi conditor orbis. Alfred's prose version is this, 
using always Mr. Sedgefield : — 

" O thou Creator of heaven and earth, that rulest on the 
eternal throne, Thou that makest the heavens to turn in swift 
course, and the stars to obey Thee, and the sun with his shin- 
ing beams to quench the darkness of black night : — (I omit 
four lines) Thou that givest short hours to the days of winter, 
and longer ones to those of summer, Thou that in harvest-tide 
with the strong North-east wind spoilest the trees of their 
leaves, and again in lenten-tide givest them fresh ones with 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 21 

the soft south-west winds, lo ! all creatures do Thy will, and 
keep the ordinances of Thy commandments, save man only ; 
he setteth Thee at naught." (Sedgefield, p. 5.) 

Now here wq have rhythm, force, dignity, and purity 
of phrase. This is fine literary prose — as Mr. Stewart 
well says, "his prose is informed with intensity and 
fire, and possesses all the vigour and swing of verse." 
Or, as Professor Earle says, it has ''a very genuine 
elevation without strain or effort." It is true that in 
Mr. Sedgefield's English the order of words and the 
terminations are varied ; but the original has to my ear 
the same fine roll : — 

Eala thu scippend heofenes and eorthan, thu the on 
tha ecan setle ricsast, thu the on hroedum foerelde thone 
heofon ymbhweorfest, and tha tunglu thu gedest the 
gehyrsume.^ 

I now turn to Chaucer's ^ prose version of the same 
passage, modernising the orthography : — 

" O thou maker of the wheel that beareth the stars, which 
that art fastened to thy perdurable chair, and turnest the 
heaven with a ravishing sway, and constrainest the stars to 
suffer thy law; so that the nioon sometime shining with her 
full horns, meeting with all the beams of the sun, her brother, 
hideth the stars that be less ; and sometime, when the moon, 
pale with her dark horns, approacheth the sun, loseth her 
lights : . . . Thou restrainest the day by shorter dwelling, 
in the time of cold winter that maketh the leaves to fall. 

^ Sedgefield' s Anglo-Saxon text, p. 10. 

2 The Complete Worh of Chaucer, by W. W. Skeat, D.C.L. Seven volumes. 
8vo. Oxford University Press, 1 894-1 897., Vol. II, p. 16. 



22 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

Thou dividest the swift tides of the night, when the hot 
summer is come. Thy might attempereth the variant seasons 
of the year ; so that Zephyrus, the debonair wind, brmgeth 
again in the first summer season the leaves that the wma 
hight Boreas hath reft away in autumn, that is to say, m the 
last end of summer. There is nothing unbound from his 
old law, nor forsakes the work of his proper estate. O thou 
governour governing all things by certain end, why retusest 
thou only to govern the works of men by due manner." ^ 
Let us turn to the version of Queen Elizabeth, 
made exactly two centuries later: — 

" O framer of starry circle 

who leaning to the lastmg gioundstone 
With whirling blast heavens tumest 

and Law compellst the skies to bear, 
Now that with foil horn, 

meetmg all her brother's flames 
the lesser stars the moon dims 

Now dark and pale her horn." ^ 

But I cannot inflict on you any more of her Majesty's 
doggrel. She should have sent for Spenser or Snake- 
speare to help her, if she was bent on poetry. 
Here is a specimen of the Queen's prose : — 
" This, when with continual woe I had burst out, seeing 
her with mild countenance nothing moved by my moans : 
' When thee,' quoth she, ' sad and wailing I saw, straight a 
wretch and exile I knew thee, but how far ofF thy banishment 
was, but that thou toldest, I knew not.' " 

What a rigmarole in Queen's English ! A question 

1 Eli^aheth^s Bocbiu. (E. E. Text Society, 1S99). Manuscripts Record Office, 
Domestic Elizabeth, 289. 



LofC. 



I 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 2^ 

may be asked — how can it be that the Saxon of 
Alfred in the ninth century can bear any comparison 
with the English of Chaucer in the fourteenth century, 
much less with the prose in the age of Shakespeare, 
Bacon, and Hooker in the sixteenth century? The 
answer I think is this. The old EngHsh of Alfred was 
a very simple, perfectly pare, and unmixed dialect of 
the great Gothic family of languages, of the Low- 
German class: It is homogeneous, with a limited 
vocabulary, using case endings like Latin, and not 
many prepositions. It was an easy instrument to 
wield, and a man of genius, nurtured in the poetry of 
centuries, could at once become master of it. In the 
age of Chaucer, English had become enormously in- 
creased in its vocabulary ; thousands of French and 
Latin words were being assimilated or tried; the struc- 
tural form had been changed ; and English prose was 
in a chaotic state, a state of solution. Chaucer's prose 
is immeasurably inferior to his verse. He did make 
a verse rendering of the fifth metre of Book II — 
Fe/ix nimium prior aetas^ which makes us long that 
he had translated Boethius's whole work into poetry, 
not into prose. Prose, as every one knows, is a plant 
of much slower growth than poetry. I am prepared 
to say it is more difficult, and in its highest flights a 
gift far more rare. And even in the age of Elizabeth, 
seven hundred years after Alfred, English prose was 

1 Given by Skeat in his Chaucer^ Vol. I, p. 380. Slightly modernised it runs : — - 

** A blissfiil life, a peaceful and a sweet, 
Ledden the peoples in a former age — " 



24 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

only becoming perfectly organic in the hands of 
Hooker and Bacon. 

But my purpose was not to make comparisons, but 
to direct attention to the dignity and beauty of Alfred's 
own thoughts. And for that end I will take a few 
passages which are Alfred's own, not translations from 
Boethius. Here is a bit from his introduction : — 

" But cruel King Theodoric heard of these designs, and 
straightway commanded that Boethius be thrust into a dun- 
geon and kept locked therein. Now, when this good man 
fell into so great straits, he waxed sore of mind, by so much 
the more that he had once known happier days. In the prison 
he could find no comfort ; falling down, grovelling on his face, 
he lay sorrowing on the floor, in deep despair, and began to 
weep over himself, and to sing : and this was his song.'* 
(S. p. 2.) 

What simple, pure, and rhythmical English, as formed 
and lucid as the English of Bunyan or of Defoe ! 

Another bit of Alfred's own, and what is so rare with 
him, a simile. Philosophy says : — 

'' When I rise aloft with these my servants {i,e, true wis- 
dom and various skill) we look down upon the storms of this 
v^orld, even as the eagle does when he soars in stormy weather 
above the clouds where no winds can harm him." (S. p. 2.) 

Alfred is never more himself than when musing on 
his royal office : — 

" Power is never a good thing, save its possessor be good, 
for, when power is beneficent, this is due to the man who 
wields it. Ye need not take thought for power nor endeavour 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 2^ 

after it, for if ye are only wise and good it will follow you, 
even though ye seek it not." (S. p. 35.) 

What a magnificent Te Deum is this ! 

" One Creator there is without any doubt, and He is the 
ruler of heaven and earth and of all creatures, visible and in- 
visible, even God Almighty. Him serve all things that serve, 
they that know Him and they that know Him not, they that 
know they are serving Him and they that know it not. He 
hath established unchanging habits and natures and Hkewise 
natural concord among all His creatures, even as He hath 
willed, and for as long as He hath willed j and they shall 
remain for ever." (S. p. 50.) 

Hear how the head of the royal house of Cerdic, after 
some four centuries of kingly descent, speaks of nobil- 
ity of birth : — 

"Lo! all men had the like beginning, coming from one 
father and one mother, and they are still brought forth alike. 
Why then do ye men pride yourselves above others without 
cause for your high birth, seeing ye can find no man but is 
high-born, and all men are of like birth, if ye will but bethink 
you of their beginning and their Creator ? True high birth 
is of the mind, not of the flesh ; and every man that is given 
over to vices forsaketh his Creator, and his origin, and his 
birth, and loseth rank till he fall to low estate." (S. p. 75.) 

Alfred takes small count of evil rulers. He says : — 

"We see them seated on high seats; bright with many 
kinds of raiment, decked with belts and golden-hilted swords 
and war dress of many kinds. . . . But if thou wert to strip 
off his robes from such an one, and take away his company of 
retainers, then thou wouldst see that he is no more than any 



26 THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

one of the courtiers who minister to him, if it be not some one 
of even lower degree." (S. p. 128.) 

When we reach the grand prose hymn with which 
the book closes, I can find nothing more nobly ex- 
pressed in the thousand years of English literature of 
which Alfred is the John the Baptist. 

" To God all is present, both that which was before and 
that which is now, yea, and that which shall be after us; 
all is present to Him. His abundance never waxeth, nor 
doth it ever wane. He never calleth aught to mind, for He 
hath forgotten naught. He looketh for naught, pondereth 
naught, for He knoweth all. He seeketh nothing, for He 
hath lost nothing. He pursueth no creature, for none may 
flee from him; nor doth He dread aught, for none is more 
mighty than He, none is like unto Him. He is ever giving, 
yet He never waneth in aught. He is ever Almighty, for 
He ever willeth good and never evil. He needeth nothing. 
He is ever watching, never sleeping. He is ever equally 
beneficent. He is ever eternal, for the time never was when 
He was not, nor ever shall be. . . . Pray for what is right 
and needful for you, for He will not deny you. Hate evil, 
and flee from it. Love virtue and follow it. Whatsoever 
ye do is ever done before the Eternal and Almighty God ; He 
seeth it all, and all He judges and will requite.?' (S. p. 174.) 

I do not pretend to be a judge of sacred poetry ; 
but I almost doubt if Dante, or A Kempis, or Milton 
have poured forth any psalm more truly in a devout 
spirit. I hold it to be in the way of pure and nervous 
EngUsh as fine as any similar outpouring in our 
language. 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 1*J 

I do not touch on the difficult points in the Alfred 
manuscripts. These technicalities I leave to the ex- 
perts. But I think the ^^ experts" have been too posi- 
tive in rejecting pieces on some very slight suggestion 
in orthography and dialect. From the literary point of 
view, I see no reason to deny the authenticity of the 
simple Proemy and still less of the noble Prayer which 
ends the Consolations. Both are to my mind instinct 
with the mother-wit, primeval simplicity, and God- 
fearing soul of the purest of kings, and the most 
spiritual of warriors and statesmen. 

Nor need we discuss at length the vexed problem 
of the authenticity of the alliterative verses translating 
the poetry of Boethius, which are appended to the 
Cotton (Otho A. vi) manuscript. This has been treated 
mainly as a question of paleography and dialect ; and 
the experts are divided and doubtful. I see no reason 
to doubt the conclusion of Mr. Stopford Brooke and 
of Mr. Sedgefield, that no good ground has yet been 
given to doubt that Alfred wrote the verse as well as 
the prose. The Proem^ which I hold to be Alfred's 
dictation, distinctly says that after he had " turned 
the book from Latin into English prose he wrought 
it up once more into verse." The verse is not alto- 
gether poetry ; it cannot compare with Beowulf and 
Caedmon. But to my ear it has the ring of Alfred's 
manly and native voice. 

I will go on to say that even as verse these pieces 
do not seem to me quite so poor. Alfred, like many 
of us who love poetry, cannot compose poetry. And 



28 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 



we do know some enthusiasts who persist in writing 
verses, when they know (or ought to know) that they 
cannot compose poetry. Alfred's verses seem to me 
the kind of lines that a great prose-writer, one who 
loved and studied poetry, but was not a born poet, 
might indite to occupy his hours of meditation. I 
confess I think there is a good ring in these lines : — 

came many a Goth 
greedy to wrestle 
The banner flashing 
Freely the heroes 
were eager to roam. 

bearing onw^ard 
far on to ocean 
Sicily lieth, 
far famed of lands." 

(S. p. 178.) 

Here Is the metrical alliterative version of the grand 
prayer — O stelliferi conditor Orbis — of which we have 
just had the prose version: — 

of bright constellations. 
Thou on thy high- seat 
Thou the round heaven 
Thou by thy holy might 
causest to hear Thee." 

(S. p. 182.) 

I will not say that this is poetry ; but it is, I think, 
as good as Sternhold and Hopkins's Psalms of David. 

Here is a bit which has a touch of imagination in it 
— not entirely that of Boethius. The verse is more 
vivid : — 



'^ Over Jove's mountain 
Gorged with glory. 
In fight with foemen. 
Fluttered on the staff. 
All Italy over 

The wdelders of bucklers. 
Even to Jove's mount 
Where in mid sea-streams 
That mighty island. 



'' O Thou Creator 

Of heaven and of earth 
Reignest eternal — 
All swiftly rollest 
The lights o^ heaven 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 2^ 

*' Feather- wings have I fleeter than a bird's 

With which I may fly far from the earth 

Over the high roof of the heaven above us ; 

But oh ! that I might thy mind furnish. 

Thy inmost wit, with these my wings. 

Until thou mightest on this world of mortals. 

On all that there liveth look down from on high." 

(S. p. 222.) 

Before I close, I will remind you of the judgment 
passed on Alfred's books by the accomplished histo- 
rian of English literature — Mr. Stopford Brooke. 
" He was/' he says, " the creator and then the father 
of English prose literature." His books "were the 
origin of English prose." The personal element, as he 
adds, stands forth clear in all his literary work. Mr. 
Stopford Brooke does not, I hold, quite do justice to 
Alfred's literary power as a translator when he says he 
had no creative power. Was not the translation of the 
Bible into English, yea, into German, perhaps into 
Latin also, a literary masterpiece, even though the 
translators inserted no new ideas of their own, or 
rather did not do so of malice aforethought ? A great 
translation is a masterpiece ; and two at least of Alfred's 
books are masterpieces in translation. But Mr. Stop- 
ford Brooke does full justice to Alfred's style as a 
writer. And to create the style of a new literature, to 
found the prose style of a nation, is a supreme literary 
triumph. Whether Alfred founded English prose style, 
is a question of the meaning of the phrase. Alfred, 
King of various tribes, then dwelling in England, com- 
posed in the vernacular a regular prose style not matched 



JO THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 

by any prose in England until the translators of the 
Psalms and Job, and in quiet force, simphcity, and 
purity not surpassed until the age of Addison. 

We all know the often quoted, often misquoted 
phrase of BufFon, — le style est Thomme meme. Of no 
one could this be said more truly — I venture to say 
so truly — as of Alfred. The whole range of ancient 
and modern literature contains nothing more genuine, 
more natural, more pellucid. He is not composing a 
book to be studied, admired, or criticised. He is bar- 
ing his whole soul to us. He speaks as one on his 
knees, in the silence of his own chamber, in the pres- 
ence of his God, who is pouring forth his inmost 
thoughts, hopes, and sorrows to the all-seeing eye, 
which knoweth the secrets of every heart, from whom 
nothing is hidden or unknown. And as he opens to 
us his own soul, as freely as he would bare it to his 
Maker, we look down into one of the purest, truest, 
bravest hearts that ever beat within a human frame. 

And by virtue of his noble simplicity of nature, this 
warrior, this ruler, this hero achieved a literary feat ; for 
he created a prose style five centuries before Chaucer, 
seven centuries before Shakespeare or vBacon, eight 
centuries before Addison or Defoe, and the full mastery 
of simple English prose. This in itself is a fact pecul- 
iarly rare in the history of any literature, where prose 
comes so much later than poetry. It can only be ex- 
plained by remembering that the language which Alfred 
spoke and wrote was not exactly early EngHsh, nor 
middle English, much less that highly composite and 



THE WRITINGS OF KING ALFRED 3 1 

tessellated mosaic we call the latest and contemporary 
English. It was but the bony skeleton of our Eng- 
lish, what the Palatine mount of Romulus was to im- 
perial Rome, what Wessex was to the present empire 
of the Queen. But it was the bones of our common 
tongue; it was the bones with the marrow in them, 
ready to be clothed in flesh and equipped with sinews 
and nerves. But this simple and unsophisticated 
tongue the genius of our Saxon hero so used and 
moulded that he founded a prose style, and taught the 
English race to trust to their own mother-tongue from 
the first ; to be proud of it, to cultivate it, to record in 
it the deeds of their ancestors, and to hand it on as a 
national possession to their children. To this it is due 
(as Professor Earle so truly says) that " we alone of all 
European nations have a fine vernacular literature in 
the ninth and tenth and eleventh centuries," so that 
neither the French immigration, nor any other immi- 
gration has ever been able to swamp our English lan- 
guage. And when I say We^ I do not mean Britons. 
I mean You of the Western Continent as much as us 
in the British islands. Alfred was as much your 
teacher, your ancestor, your hero, as he was ours. He 
spoke that tongue, he founded that literature, which is 
imperishable on both sides of the Atlantic, which is one 
of the chief glories of the human race, which the three 
corners of the world shall never be able to swamp by 
any immigration of any foreign speech — whilst we who 
are set to guard our common tongue, in the words of 
our great poet, to ourselves do rest but true. 



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